Airline complaints spike since United Flight 3411 incident

This file photo from July 22, 2014, shows United Airlines jets at Newark Liberty International Airport.(Photo: Julio Cortez, AP)

Complaints by U.S. airline passenger surged in April, increasing nearly 70% from the same month in 2016.

The spike came in the same month the industry was rocked by a passenger-dragging incident on United Express Flight 3411. That April 9 confrontation was captured on cellphone video and put an intense spotlight on airline customer service, sparking a global public relations crisis for United and leading to a stream of subsequent videos chronicling mishaps on a number of U.S. carriers.

Both cancellations and delays were up year-over-year in April, but it’s likely the broad coverage of the United incident emboldened customers to file formal complaints against airlines for perceived customer-service gaffes during the period.

Most consumers complain directly to the airline, but the carriers don't have to report those figures. Of the complaints that were filed specifically to the Department of Transportation, more than one-third of complaints dealt with canceled or delayed flights or missed connection.

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Boeing jetliners - ordered from the company's first major jetliner, the 707, through the state-of-the-art 787 Dreamliner - line a taxiway outside the Museum of Flight in Seattle as the American airplane-maker celebrated its 100th birthday on July 15, 2016.
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Boeing jetliners - ordered from the company's first major jetliner, the 707, through the state-of-the-art 787 Dreamliner - line a taxiway outside the Museum of Flight in Seattle as the American airplane-maker celebrated its 100th birthday on July 15, 2016.
Jeremy Dwyer-Lindgren for USA TODAY

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For the month of April, 78.5% of U.S. flights arrived on schedule – defined as within 14 minutes of its schedule arrival time. That figure was down 84.5% from April 2016 and down from 79.9% in March 2017. The number of canceled flights also rose in April, with carriers canceling 1.6% of their scheduled domestic flights. That was up from the 0.9% cancellation rate posted in April 2016, but down from the 1.8% rate of March 2017.

By airline, Hawaiian Airlines posted the best on-time arrival rate, with 88.8% of its flights arriving on time in April. United was No. 2 (81.9%) while Alaska Airlines had the third-best rate (81.6%). Virgin America (64.6%) and JetBlue (72.4%) had the worst April on-time rates of the 12 airlines included in the BTS data.

For complaints, budget carrier Spirit and United had the highest rate of complaints during the month. Still, Spirit’s rate of complaints (7.2 per 100,000 “enplanements) was more than double that of United’s (3.04 per 100,000).

Southwest was the least-complained about U.S. carrier (0.5 complaints per 100,000 enplanements), followed by regional carrier SkyWest (0.81) and Alaska Airlines (1.0). SkyWest operates feeder flights for four of the USA’s biggest airlines (American, Delta, United and Alaska).

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